1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communication, and more particularly to methods and systems for using wireless communication to authorize a new available funds balance for business transaction cards, such as debit and credit cards.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years there has been a consistent trend of moving to a “cashless society.” One aspect of that trend may be seen in the steady increase in the use of personal transaction cards used to authorize or facilitate various financial transactions. For example, cards that are widely used for conducting business transactions, and especially consumer business transactions, include credit cards, debit cards, cash cards, value cards and bank cards. With technological advances, the features of these cards are ever changing and card classifications and definitions are therefore somewhat ambiguous and fluid.
Smart cards are “credit card” sized cards that contain electronics and are well known in the art as being useful for identification cards, access cards, credit cards and other business transaction cards. Smart cards are now readily available to many consumers for use in a variety of ways. Some smart cards include a microprocessor and a memory and others are simply memory cards with hardwired logic. Smart cards may be battery operated or they may operate without a battery. U.S. Pat. No. 6,572,015, issued to Norton, discloses a smart card having wireless communication capability and is hereby incorporated fully by reference.
Smart cards that communicate wirelessly with smart card readers may communicate with a card reader using one of several known communication protocols. One popular wireless communication protocol is Bluetooth, which provides a specification for short distance wireless radio frequency (RF) communication applications. Bluetooth operates in a multi-user environment to allow wireless communication between wireless communication devices within a specific radius of each other. An example of a wireless smart card utilizing Bluetooth technology may be found in the U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003-0172028 of Abell, et al., which is hereby fully incorporated by reference. Abell discloses a Bluetooth enabled smart card that is used to communicate with a merchant's billing system so that a customer's bill, such as a restaurant check, may be charged to the smart card. One benefit of this disclosed method is that the customer does not have to wait for a server to return with the customer's credit card, charge slip or change.
While the advancing technology and other aspects of the cashless society have simplified consumer transactions, the trend towards the cashless society has not eliminated all consumer transaction concerns. One concern is the use of credit cards and debit cards by unauthorized individuals. Another concern is the ease with which these cards may be used by authorized individuals. Consumers are often exposed to advertisements and glittering store displays that tempt consumers to make spontaneous purchases. Consumers charge large sums of money to their credit cards and many carry very high credit card balances. Before the trend to the cashless society, consumers went to the store with a fixed amount of cash in their possession and, when that cash was spent, no other purchases could be made until the consumer went to the bank to withdraw additional cash. By contrast, the only limit on the spending power of a consumer today is the consumer's credit limit on a credit card or the amount of cash that the consumer has in an account upon which a debit card draws.
Before the cashless society trend, parents could give their teenaged children a set amount of cash and send them to the store to buy, for example, their back-to-school clothes. Today, parents often send their teenage children to the mall for purchasing their back-to-school clothes with the credit cards or debit cards of the parents clutched in their teenagers' hands. Such trips to the mall often result in much higher expenditures than the parents originally envisioned.
Attempts have been made by others to limit the funds that are available to an individual through a credit or a debit card. For example, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003-0028481 discloses a limited use credit card having a credit limit for each specific transaction or a credit limit such that when the aggregate amount of a series of transactions exceeds a specific credit limit, then the credit card number would be canceled or invalidated. The 2003-0028481 publication also discloses other restrictions that could be placed on a limited use card including, inter alia, limitations as to time period, frequency of use, geographical region, and merchant classification.
In other examples, U.S. Pat. No. 5,350,906 (Brody, et al.) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,326,960 (Tannenbaum, et al.) disclose methods for issuing temporary personal identification numbers (PINs) for one time or limited credit access to an account at an ATM. These patents disclose a currency transfer system and method for an ATM network. In this system, a sponsor account holder sets up a sub-account that may be accessed by a non-subscriber presenting a fixed-limit card associated with the sub-account and by entering a password corresponding to the sub-account. Once the fixed limit is reached, the card can no longer be used. The fixed-limit card is disclosed as containing information on a magnetic stripe that pertains to the sponsor account.
While others have recognized that consumers need a method and system that limits their access to their funds and thereby limits their susceptibility to vendors' efforts to encourage spontaneous purchases, there is currently no method or system that allows a consumer to easily control access to available credit or funds and thereby limit or control spending on spontaneous purchases. It would be advantageous if such a method and system further decreased the risk of fraudulent use of a business transaction card or minimized the dangers associated with conducting personal banking at, for example, and ATM.
The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following more particular description of a preferred embodiment of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings wherein like reference numbers represent like parts of the invention.